Collapse! A game about transitioning through peak oil

Writing games to help us imagine what life may be like after a massive social change is a design space I'm interested in exploring. Dave Pollard is designing a boardgame at the moment that looks interesting:

Collapse! The Game: Early draft

via Energy Bulletin - by kristinsponsler on 12/22/11

Some of you are aware that I have been working on a cooperative board game called Collapse! designed to help people learn and practice grassroots community-building and preparing locally for the various crises that may precede civilization's collapse. I've finally got a first outline draft of the game, and decided to share it with the world before I go any further. Here are the rules and some images of the game equipment that I have developed thus far, along with a list of what I still have to do to complete the game's development.

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You can read more and give feedback to Dave directly on his blog: here.

Eaarth: 11 ways to prepare for, adapt to, and live with climate change

We need to build the architecture for the world that comes next, says Bill McKibben, in his book Eaarth. He's talking about the fact that pretty fundamental changes are already happening in Earth's climate, and that we need to do what we can to limit that damage.

The 'architecture' McKibben is talking about are the social and economic changes that we're going to need to make in the way we live our lives on a world that's not longer quite as supportive or forgiving of us. It's the shift from a culture of growth, huge scales, speed and the search for new-ness to a culture that's durable and stable. In McKibben's words:

The economy that has defined our Western world is like a  racehorse, fleet and showy, bred for speed, with narrow, tapered legs; tap it on the haunch, and it accelerates down the back stretch. But don't put it on the track where the rain has turned things muddy; know that even a small bump in its path will break its stride and quite likely snap that thin and speedy leg. 

The racehorse, like our economy, has been optimised for one thing only: pure burning swiftness.
What we need to do, even while we're in the saddle, is transform our racehorse into a workhorse - into something dependable, even-tempered, long-lasting, uncomplaining. Won't go fast, will go long; won't win the laurel, will carry the day. 

The high praise for a workhorse is "she's steady." "She can pull." We're talking walk or trot or jog, not canter or gallop. 

Our time has been marked by ever-increasing speed - paddle-wheeler to locomotive to aireplane to rocket, Model T to Formula 1. 

Can you imagine slower?

McKibben makes the case that we need a slower, more durable and robust economy, one that's more local and community focused by exploring how the international systems we use to get our fuel and food are now 'too big to fail' ... which means they're too big, because they're basically guaranteed to fail quite a few times over the next 15 years, and the shocks for us each time that happens are going to be painful.

These are messages that I've heard a few times before. The difference is that now I'm on a kick to convert the stuff I read (especially ideas with huge implications) into specific practical actions that I can take. (*)

* Obviously, I'm doing that with the idea that if other

 people also do it to then it adds up to something.

11 ways to live with and adapt to climate change

The basic ideas that McKibben puts forth are that we need to massively drop our energy consumption and put less stress on our food supply (by being able to make up any shortfalls ourselves).

Extrapolating from the stuff he talks about in the second haalf of Eaarth, I've come up with some initial steps I'll need to take in the short term and the medium term (none of them should be particularly surprising). I'm going to add to this plan as I keep reading about this stuff.

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In the short-term:

Switch all of the light bulbs in my apartment to energy efficient bulbs: either LED or CFLs (Welcome to RightLight.govt.nz | rightlight.govt.nz)

Increase the amount of vegetarian meals I eat during the week by one. I'm already eating one or two, and I feel like I can comfortably push that up to two or three meals a week.

Start gardening (even the tiniest amount). This isn't a skill I'm comfortable with but it seems smart to start thinking about it.

Downsize and declutter. I cannot thank Jennifer enough for breaking me of my pack-rat habit. By owning less stuff (that's more precious to me), I can actually find the things I want. Incidentally, I can also live in a smaller place which is (a) cheaper, and (b) easier to insulate and heat.

Make sure that the power company we're using doesn't use coal as a source of energy. Investigation and possible switching companies is required.

Join a group like 350.org or Coal Action Network (Coal Action Network Aotearoa | leave it in the ground). Actively campaigning against the use of coal in energy generation is starting to seem like a very very effective use of time and money (but I'll be investigating this more).

Wherever possible, car pool or use public transport. I'm also keen to get a bike.

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In the medium term:

Start moving towards energy self-sufficiency (or at least generating part of the energy I need, myself). Solar-powered hot water seems to be a pretty established technology.

Look at solar panels more general, and check out the state of wind-generators.

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In the longer term:


McKibben picks de-urbanisation as becoming a growing trend. I need to keep an eye on the costs and benefits of living in particular locations, and be prepared to shift lifestyles slightly if required - for instance, move to the country or flatting/living communally again.

Investigate (or instigate) schemes to establish communally owned power generators.



Previous posts about Eaarth
multi-dimensional: Eaarth: A first look at our new planet
multi-dimensional: Eaarth: the problem with climate change is the little things

Eaarth: the problem with climate change is the little things

I'm about to dive into the third part of Eaarth - Bill McKibben's appraisal of the current state of climate change, how the Earth has already changed, and how we might have to adapt and change our lifestyles in response. Part 3 is all about that issue, but before I go there I just wanted to note two thoughts that McKibben has repeatedly emphasised in the first half of his book.


1. Climate change has already happened

McKibben describes how almost all commentators on climate change talk about how we have to do something or else our children and our grandchildren will face the consequences of our inaction. It's a powerful emotional and moral argument, but McKibben says it's bullshit. The time for action was 20 years ago: we are the children and grandchildren who are facing the consequences of inaction.


2. Infrastructure is going to be a big problem

In Part 2 of Eaarth, McKibben describes the many ways in which our civilisation is butting up against our planet's limits. He wrote this in 2009/2010, and the recession is very much part of the landscape of the book. With limited money, decisions about how to prioritise spending are going to become more and more painful. We're not just talking about building a series of barriers to protect Venice or the Netherlands, or the repairs to New Orleans or the reconstruction of Haiti after it was hit by four hurricanes in a row. It's the little things: like flooding causes burst pipes and collapsed bridges, so a country's transport budget has to get split between emergency repairs and road maintenance. That if powerful storms hit with increasing regularity and force, and keep blowing the roof off your building, eventually your insurance premiums are going to go up.

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This is a book filled with little details, human-level stories, and extracts from recent news articles that have pretty huge implications. I'm finding it fascinating

Eaarth: A first look at our new planet

There's a reason Bill McKibben's book 'eaarth' has an extra 'a' in the title.(*)  He wants to vividly demonstrate that climate change has already happened. He's saying that we now live on a new planet,  Eaarth: a planet that looks superficially similar to the Earth we grew up on but one that's becoming an increasingly hostile place to support human life.

(*) McKibbon is the founder of 350.org, which advocates 

that the safe level of carbon in the Earth's atmosphere

 is 350 parts per million (ppm). Above that level, 

and the effects of global warming become more 

and more likely to be activated.(**)

(**) Our atmosphere's already at 391 ppm.

McKibben wants to make the point that "the planet on which our civilisation evolved no longer exists", and that we've travelled to our new planet propelled by a huge burst of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide. McKibben spend the first chapter of his book demonstrating the increasingly hostile environment of our new planet by quoting news article after news article. I've reproduced three of the ones that hit home hardest with me, here:

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Maldives May Relocate Due to Global Warming: "Mohamed Nasheed, the island nation’s new president, has announced a plan to buy a new homeland, just in case his sinking country completely disappears."


Kiribati Islanders Seek Land to Buy as Rising Seas Threaten - Bloomberg: "Kiribati, a Pacific island-nation in danger of being submerged because of global warming, may purchase land elsewhere to relocate its people, President Anote Tong said"

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No more drought: it's a 'permanent dry' - Climate Watch - theage.com.au: "DROUGHT will become a redundant term as Australia plans for a permanently drier future, according to the nation's urban water industries chief.

And climate experts yesterday predicted the present drought would continue, signalling a cruel summer for farmers and sparking fears of higher food prices.

'The urban water industry has decided the inflows of the past will never return,' Water Services Association of Australia executive director Ross Young said. 'We are trying to avoid the term 'drought' and saying this is the new reality.'"

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Even the IMF is starting to get peak oil « The Standard: "Like the warning from the American military — by 2015 there are likely to be “serious shortages” in oil supply. Like the warnings from the German military, Lloyds of London, the IEA and others (reviewed in a report from our own Parliamentary library). Now we can add the IMF to the list:

WSJ: IMF: “Increased Scarcity” Ahead For Oil Markets

Governments should brace for “increased scarcity” in global oil markets and the risk of additional sharp price spikes in the coming years, the International Monetary Fund warned Thursday. …"

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It's fascinating stuff, and I'm looking forward to reading and digging into this more. Next up, McKibben's going to examine the various ways in which we've exceeded the limitations of our planet, and then he's going to talk about a new economic model.


You might want to check out this really excellent (20 minute) talk by Naomi Klein, too. She takes the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill as her starting point, and discusses how and why people can fail to make wise long-term decisions.

A possible future for Avalon Studios

"TVNZ announced in April that it planned to sell Avalon studio in 2013. Its Good Morning breakfast show will move to Auckland early next year, threatening up to 12 fulltime positions and contracted workers. 

Lower Hutt Mayor Ray Wallace said he was worried not enough was being done to sell Avalon while it was still fully equipped.

'I made it quite clear that the community was not happy about the sale, but if it was going to be sold then it needed to be sold as an ongoing concern, not as an empty warehouse.'"

MP fears Avalon will be sold as empty shell | Stuff.co.nz:

Reading that article made me think about this excellent talk from TED.com: Retrofitting Suburbia, which is all about communities taking back abandoned malls, office buildings and car-parks and repurposing them for their town or suburbs benefit. It's about 17 minutes long, and an interesting glimpse into a possible future.

Long Range Thinking: Links of interest

Some links about long-range thinking ...

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Bill Ford: A future beyond traffic gridlock | Video on TED.com

This is a pretty interesting talk. Bill Ford is representing the Ford motor company - but he's also doing a good job of talking about a zero-emission private transport system where individual vehicles are highly networked (for maximum fuel and travel-time efficiency).

I'd love to see an equivalent talk about the future of shared transportation.

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The Earth Is Full - NYTimes.com: 

Thomas Friedman's op-ed makes for a good read about how economic and environmental red-lining are going to force changes in the way we live.

"We are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth’s resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. “Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,” says Gilding. 

This is not science fiction. This is what happens when our system of growth and the system of nature hit the wall at once.

While in Yemen last year, I saw a tanker truck delivering water in the capital, Sana. Why? Because Sana could be the first big city in the world to run out of water, within a decade. That is what happens when one generation in one country lives at 150 percent of sustainable capacity."

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The most powerful climate video you’ll see all week | Grist

A combination of this op-ed by Bill McKibben (350.org) with footage of extreme weather events. My response: as a civilisation, the first world has had about 250 years of benefits, abundance, and growth from the Industrial Revolution. I'm thinking it's about time for us to start sucking up the consequences of that for the next 250 years, which is going to involve some pretty fundamental changes in what we want and how we behave.

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World on course for catastrophic 6° rise, reveal scientists - Climate Change, Environment - The Independent


This article is from November 2009 (pre-Copenhagen). I need to do some research about what's happening now.

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The exponential function : James Shaw:


James pointed me towards this video, in which Albert Bartlett, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder, notes that, “the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”"

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The trouble with predicting climate change: 

University of Bristol Earth scientist Paul Valdes argues that climate change is best understood as a series of 'tipping points' rather than gradual, incremental shifts.

I'll be blogging more about this once I've finished digesting Dr James Hansen's 'Storms of my Grandchildren'.

Long Range Thinking: How to save the world

Merry Christmas! The previous post talked about nine 'boundaries' that we have to keep the world operating inside, to first avoid environmental collapse and then to keep Earth on a stable footing. Several of these boundaries are affected by population pressure.

For the first time while watching TED.com, I saw conceptual links between three different presentations. It was very cool, because (watched in sequence) they give a clear argument and solution to stabilising world population at around nine billion people.

First up, Hans Rosling sets the stage by illustrating that an increase to nine billion is inevitable (barring nuclear war or massive die-backs). And he does it in a way that's low-tech and convincing.



After that, the obvious question is how do we lower or stabilise the birth rate? Hans Rosling makes a good case for educating women being the key.



Finally, this presentation by Sugata Mitra lays out a low-cost, resource-light way of spreading education into the areas of the world that really need it. His thesis: let children educate themselves. Warning: this presentation is wicked.



I'm going to be on the look out now for more talks that lay out simple solutions to these nine boundaries:

- climate change
- ozone levels
- ocean acidification
- levels of nitrogen and phosphorus
- freshwater use
- rate of biodiversity loss
- changes in land use
- air pollution
- chemical pollution

Long Range Thinking: Ready for the most exciting phase in human history?

This TED presentation is a must-see: it makes dealing with climate change and related problems seem achievable, and the presenter (Johan Rockstrom) delivers a fantastically engaging first half presentation via an inflatable globe and some unconventional stage moves, before moving into an assertive, more pragmatic second half.

He makes the case that this will be the most exciting 30 years in human history, as we undergo an unprecendented social and economic transformation in order to make the Earth a viable, ongoing business proposition for 9 billion people.



Rockstrom lists nine parameters (or 'safety fences') that humanity has to operate within. Basically, he sets out an owner's guide to operating the Earth. Those parameters are:

- climate change
- ozone levels
- ocean acidification
- levels of nitrogen and phosphorus
- freshwater use
- rate of biodiversity loss
- changes in land use
- air pollution
- chemical pollution

Rockstrom identifies three of these parameters as having already passed into the danger zone:


- climate change
- levels of nitrogen and phosphorus
- rate of biodiversity loss


By setting parameters that we have to operate within, and identifying the ones that urgently need to be dealt with, Rockstrom makes dealing with climate change and its related problems seem achievable.

Highly recommended (and a hat-tip to Hot Topic, where I first saw this presentation on the quadruple squeeze.)

How to get things done: Stop getting things done!

One piece of advice about setting up a system to get things done (GTD) more efficiently: be prepared to experience a combination of ‘adrenaline from *doing* stuff’ and ‘feeling overwhelmed by the amount of stuff you have to do’. I’ve experienced this twice now: the first time I set up my GTD system, and just last month (when I radically simplified it).

Both times, I was left feeling stressed by the amount of stuff I’d taken on.

Which reveals one of the secrets to this whole GTD system: be careful about what you take on and decide to do. Taking an inventory of all of your commitments will reveal exactly how much stuff you feel obligated to finish and achieve.

Last year I read a book called Margin, which described the feeling of free time in your life as the white margin around the pages of a book. The more stuff you pack into your life, the less margin you have, the less freedom to relax, unwind, contemplate.

If you want margin, you’ve got to push back against obligations:

+ push some of them into your ‘Someday/Maybe’ list rather than doing them right now

+ drop some of them (or renegotiate to do them later)

+ take a break from using this system; just vege out for a day or two.

My mind, at least, is not designed to be productive all the time. It needs ebbs and flows. Being aware that sometimes you don’t need to get things done is key to this.

In that spirit, I was originally going to end this series of posts with an offer to help people who are interested in this stuff set up their own GTD systems. Instead, if you’re interested in this stuff, let me know and we can discuss it sometime.

In the meantime, ‘How to Get Things Done’ is available from the library (and from me); you can also read the Simple Dollar’s review of How to Get Things Done.

How to get things done: Review everything at least once a week

Now you’ve got your organizational system set up, and it includes:

• a lists of projects you want to tackle
• a way of reminding yourself about things that are coming up (your calendar, a tickler file)
• a list of next actions to take

But this isn’t the sort of thing you do once and then forget about it. You’ll always be having new ‘stuff’ coming in: emails, appointments, news that ranges from surprising (your mum’s in town) to life-changing (your flat is being sold).

The trick, then, is to set aside an hour or two every week to catch up on everything that’s new in your life. You’ll have to review that new stuff (and look over your existing obligations and items on your to-do list). The idea behind this weekly review is to make sure that you know everything that’s going on in your life; the consequence of that is that you’ll feel confident that the things you’re deciding to do right now are the best possible uses of your time.

I’ve come across a couple of philosophies about what to do with the realizations that come out of your weekly review: they boil down to (a) schedule fixed amounts of time into your calendar to deal with particular issues or projects, or (b) rely on checking your to-do list to figure out what your next action should be.

I’ve tried (a) for a while, especially in a work context, but at the moment I’m more a fan of (b) … playing things a little looser is feeling both easier to maintain and easier to adapt to changing situations.

There’s a couple of deeper level reviews that you can do as well; the only one I’ll mention in any detail is that after I finish my two ‘New Things’ – the projects that I’m especially focusing on at the moment, I review my projects lists and goals for the year, to decide what my new New Things should be.

How to Get Things Done: List out all your projects

This is the third of four posts about How to Get Things Done, a book by Dave Allen that shows you how to set up a system to feel more on top of everything in your life.


Today I want to talk about the one element of the Getting Things Done (GTD) system that I resisted for years: having a complete list of all of the projects you want to do.(*) Through a combination of OOS/RSI and scattering information about my projects in handwritten notes spread through 10 different manilla folders, I found it really difficult to review everything that was going on in my life, or that I wanted to do.

* Allen defines a project as anything that 

needs more than 2 actions to complete.

My series of posts on 'The New Thing' started to change my mind though. I've come to the conclusion that I can really only consider two things at any time as being my main priorities. What I needed to do was figure out how to present all of my commitments and things I wanted to do so that I could easily choose what to focus on. Here's what I've done (and this is still a work-in-progress, liable to be refined) ...

Two massive Word documents: Vital and Wild

I decided to divide my projects into two categories. First, there are the things I consider to be vital; they're either urgent, necessary, or they feel essential to my growth as a person. Second, there are the things I'd like to do, the wild and crazy ideas I've had, the things I'm not sure about yet, the goals that once seemed really inspiring but now I'm left a little bit cold by them.



What I've done is created two Word documents (one called 'Vital' and one called 'Wildcards') and put very brief descriptions of each project into them, like this:

• Buy a new cellphone (*)
• Digitise my CD collection

The (*) indicates that that project has some supporting material attached to it; sometimes I write down some notes or brainstorm some ideas about a project, and I want to keep it for when I finally start to work on it. I store these in two manilla folders in my filing cabinet (one for 'Vital' and one for 'Wildcards').

Sometimes I'll write down the next action I want to take with the project, just as a prompt:

• Learn how to edit on Adobe Premiere: ask Norman for footage

I'm storing these files in Dropbox (and I should totally set up a project to figure out how to make the files automatically sync every time I make a change).








A list of the projects I'm actively working on

Out of all of those possible projects, there are going to be somewhere between 8 to 100 that I'm working on at any one time.(*) I record these in a notebook I've set specifically aside for my list of 'Active Projects'.

* 'Up to 100' is Allen's number; so far 

I've found it sets between 5 to 20.

Each of these Active Projects has a manilla folder filled with all the supporting material I need for them, and I store these in a separate drawer of my filing cabinet, for easy access.

As part of my Weekly Review (which I'll talk about in the next post), I make sure that there's at least one item in my to-do list that tells me the next action I need to take for each project.

Why am I going to all this trouble? It's simply so I can feel like I'm aware of everything I've got responsibility for and I can easily spot if anything's falling between the cracks. The end result is simply that I feel on top of stuff, and I'm confident that I'm moving stuff forward and finishing things.



Focus on two things

Finally, to make sure I'm making progress, I choose two things and work on them for 20 minutes first thing in the morning, and first thing when I get home. Mark Forster calls this the 'current initiative', and I've found it a great technique.



Only once I've completed both of those 'things' do I choose what to do next.



One more post. In this one, I'll talk about how I use all this stuff (the Weekly Review, which I mentioned above).

How to Get Things Done: Write Everything Down

I'm talking about How to Get Things Done, a book by Dave Allen that changed my life by showing me how to set up a system that captures everything that's going on in my life, helps me figure out where it all fits, and then gives me a way to prioritise what to do next.

Capture everything

If you're like me, you have a crapload of stuff going on in your life: things to write; people to see; obligations to fulfil; (hopefully) holidays to plan; kids to raise; emails to send; bills to pay; and more, and more, and more ...

The theory behind the Getting Things Done (GTD) system is that you need to write everything down and review it. Writing it down means you've gotten it out of your head. If you've gotten the idea out of your head and you can trust yourself to review it, then your brain becomes a lot calmer and stops thinking about the idea over and over again.

I've had this happen to me many times when I can't sleep because I'm thinking about something. If I just take the time to turn on the light and write it down, I usually find I pop off to sleep five or ten minutes later.

If you've known me for a while, you'll know that I write everything down in a hipster pda that I carry around everywhere. This is why - I want to capture every idea and look at it later to see if it's worthwhile or something I want to commit to doing.

Here's how to build a hipster pda:

1. cut up a bunch of paper or get a bunch of 3"x5" file cards
2. clip them together with a binder clip
3. there is no step 3

There are other sources of information I have to collect from as well:

• my intray
• emails
• texts and phone messages
• meetings and conversations

Organise Everything

Once you've captured everything, the next step in the GTD system is to figure out where it goes. Is it something you should do right away? Is it something you need to think about for a while? Is it a project, and if so is it urgent or more something you might do someday?

There's a place for everything in the system, and How to Get Things Done goes into quite a bit of detail about how to set up a filing system, use a calendar, and set up something called a tickler file (which effectively allows you to 'post' things to yourself):



Every item you've captured will go somewhere: into your to-do list; into a list of actual or potential projects; into your calendar; into the trash.

Next up, I want to talk about those project lists - because that's something I resisted doing for years ... and I was wrong.

How to Get Things Done: What's the Next Action?

There's an observation in my previous post about economics that really sticks with me: most people are too busy dealing with the day-to-day tasks in their life to lift their heads up every once in a while and see the bigger picture. I've certainly felt like that, and its that feeling - coupled with setting up a new organisational system at my work - that's motivated me to talk about one of the books that really literally changed my life.

How to Get Things Done by Dave Allen is a book that - at its most basic level - is about how to set up a filing system. But really its about how to set up a system that captures everything that's going on in your life, helps you consider where it all fits, and then gives you tools and routines to help you prioritise what to do next.

I've been using it since 2005, and I only now feel like I'm beginning to apply some of the deeper lessons from it (and that's after doing some extra reading and thinking about it).

What I'd like to do in the next few posts is talk about the basics of the version of the system I use. Perhaps it'll be helpful; most of it will probably be similar to (or an extension of) things you're already doing.

The Next Action List

Over the last few years, I have shifted to a single to-do list, which captures everything that's going on in my life.

However: the items on this to-do list are all written using one of two basic principles of the Getting Things Done (GTD) system; each item describe, in very specific terms, the next physical action I need to do. For instance, it doesn't say:

• Sell spare clothes to the Costume Cave.

Instead it says:

• Call Costume Cave (385-9682)

The item before that might have said:

• Google 'Costume Cave' and find out phone number.

The other basic principle is that if an item can be done in under 2 minutes, do it then and there. You'll make more progress, and it'll be easier and faster than writing it down and revisiting it.

I've tried a lot of systems for organising my to-do lists but the best version I've found is called 'Autofocus', developed by productivity expert Mark Forster. There's an online demonstration of how it works, here.

Essentially, I have one to-do list stored in a 1B5 notebook. In the next post, I'll talk about how things get into that notebook.

"A meaningful prosperity": Changing the economic system

I found this 20 minute talk by Tim Jackson about the limits of growth in our economic system to be worthwhile. Essentially, it's a clear explanation of how we could handle a global population of nine billion people all wanting a 'good', 'Western' lifestyle.



The talk points out the intersection between economics and the desire for novelty, which leads to resources being used to create new, shiny consumer goods.(*)

(*) Like iPads, which I'm still restraining myself from buying.

When Jackson couples this observation with a discussion of the levels of consumer debt leading into the financial crisis, he comes up with this pithy summary:

This is a story about us, people being persuaded to spend money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last on people we don't care about.

There's lots more to this talk, but the thing that really stuck out to me as relevant to the idea of developing our long range thinking is the observation that we're too busy taking care of the small-scale, day-to-day stuff to deal with the bigger picture or more intractable problems.

The Long News

A three minute talk about gaining some perspective on world events.



www.longnews.org

New Thing: The Long Range Game

I've started a new game project based on the thinking I've been doing about planning and visualising the future. I get a little frustrated with myself - I care about the world; there are problems that I want to solve. But I don't know where to start.

So I'm writing a game about figuring out where to start, what could happen next, and what to do about it. This is a game to help me visualise the future. This is a game that will hopefully make planning fun.

I've given myself three restrictions:

• Must be under 3000 words
• Must not use randomisers like dice or cards
• Must be playable online.

I suspect it'll draw off Morgue's work with Small Group Action (pdf) a little bit.

Long Range: Ariely on cheating

I'll summarise the main points of Dan Ariely's talk on cheating here. If anyone want to dig into this a little bit deeper, let's hit the comments.




Ariely's saying that people like to think of themselves as a 'good' person ("They like to be able to look themselves in the mirror"). But effectively what that means is that people can cheat a little bit as long as it doesn't change their image of themselves.

That means that the amount a person cheats is NOT affected by:

• how much they can potentially earn through cheating
• discovering there's a reduced probability that they'll get caught

Neither of these has an effect on a person's mental image of themselves.

But you can increase the likelihood that they'll cheat through two simple methods:

• make what they're cheating or stealing more abstract or symbolic; the less it initially feels like tangible money or valuable goods, the easier it is to cheat or steal it
• be part of a group where it's socially acceptable to cheat

The conclusion Ariely draws here is that the stock-market (*) is a prime target for this sort of cheating as it's filled with items of value that don't feel like money, and is run by a group that has suffered from people committing spectacular fraud. There's a short article expanding on this talk, here, where Ariely discusses the Bernie Madoff financial scam. He speculates that some members of the financial industry, "now that they have been exposed to this extreme level of dishonesty, might adopt slightly lower moral scruples."

(*) Well, the stock-market or a corporation's profits.

I also found this interesting: You can decrease our inclination to cheat / improve our morality simply by making us think about moral things (the 10 Commandments, the Honour code). You don't have to believe in this things for it to have an effect - one of Ariely's experiments showed a statistically significant decrease in cheating (like, no cheating) when atheists swore on the Bible.

One other item of note for this series on long range thinking. Ariely claims that people (tend to) feel that their intuition about things is right. That would mean that it's difficult to motivate yourself to test whether your intuitions or theories about how the world works are actually correct.

Long Range: Does choice work?

OK, time to start dipping back into this series. For new readers, Long Range is my attempt to examine why some people are able to successfully think further into the future than others.

My first set of posts on this topic got slightly sidetracked when Billy and Mike both raised the reasonable point that people don't make the best decisions possible - that our judgments have biases and irrationalities built into them. So, as well as looking at some of my social psychology texts, there's also going to be some study of the following books in the near future:

Nudge
Stumbling on Happiness
Predictably Irrational

Nudge is an interesting book, because (as I understand it from listening to one podcast) it postulates that you can give people choices, but you get 'better' results when you constrain people to a 'choice architecture' that's been designed to guide people towards an optimal result.

Here's a local situation to illustrate the difference. The previous Labour-led government wanted to introduce legislation that eliminated conventional lightbulbs from the marketplace, replacing them with more efficient compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs.

Recently, the Electricity Commission announced the launch of rightlight.govt.nz, a website to provide tools and information to help families and businesses reduce their power bills and choose the right efficient light for the particular application.

State-imposed constraints versus freedom of choice. I am fascinated to see if the rightlight initiative has an noticeable impact, as (I believe) people will buy the cheapest thing. The lower prices of conventional bulbs will be more appealing to consumers than any projected long range benefits of buying CFLs.

So the question I think I'll be looking at (occasionally) over the next few months is 'Does choice work?'

Presentation: Wake up, Freak out, and then get a grip

Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.

A great example of a compelling metaphor - this one explains the 'tipping point' - and a pretty good visual representation of feedback cycles.

[Long Range Thinking] Negotiating through a complex problem (Part 3)

In 'Solving Tough Problems', Adam Kahane talks about his involvement in a negotiation about what post-apartheid South Africa would look like. Could they achieve the seemingly-impossible, and negotiate a peaceful transition in power that would lead to a prosperous country? The negotiations were held at the Mont Fleur Conference Center. What follows is part 3 of a series of direct quotes from the book:

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The most extraordinary characteristic of the Mont Fleur process was the relaxed openness of the conversation. The team members not only spoke openly but, over the course of the meetings, changed what they said.

Open listening is the basis for all creativity - in business and engineering as much as in politics.

"[Work hard] to learn how to listen, without judging, to what the other person is trying to say-really to be there. If we listen in the normal closed way, for what is right and what is wrong, then we won't be able to hear what is possible: what might be but is not yet. We won't be able to create anything new."

The members of the Mont Fleur team had listened, not only openly, but also reflectively. When they listened, they were not just reloading their old tapes. They were receptive to new ideas. More than that, they were willing to be influenced and changed. They held their ideas lightly; they noticed and questioned their own thinking; they separated themselves from their ideas ("I am not my ideas, and so you and I can reject them without rejecting me "). They "suspended" their ideas, as if on strings from the ceiling and walked around and look at those ideas from different perspectives.

To create new realities, we have to listen reflectively. It is not enough to be able to hear clearly the chorus of other voices; we must also hear the contribution of our own voice. It is not enough to be able to see others in the picture of what is going on; we must also see what we ourselves are doing. It is not enough to be observers of the problem situation; we must also recognise ourselves as actors who influence the outcome.

Bill Torbet of Boston College once said to me that the 1960s slogan "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem" actually misses the most important point about effecting change. The slogan should be, he said, "If you're not part of the problem, you can't be part of the solution." If we cannot see how what we are doing or not doing is contributing to things being the way that they are, then logically we have no basis at all, zero leverage, for changing the way things are - except from the outside, by persuasion or force.